Sautrāntika

An early school whose origins and tenets are obscure. Vasumitra mentions a school called the Saṃkrāntikas, ascribing to it specific teachings concerning rebirth (saṃkrānti) and no other teachings. Unfortunately, Hsüan-tsang mistakenly translated this as Sautrāntika, although the Tibetan translation and the other two Chinese translations all render it correctly. Other Chinese references to the Sautrāntikas are probably the result of the same error. Apart from this, no Sarvāstivādin source prior to the 6th century ce ever lists the Sautrāntikas as a school (nikāya). One explanation of the origins of the name Sautrāntika may lie in the fact that certain Sarvāstivādin monasteries that had accepted Mahāyāna sūtras and teachings developed their own Abhidharma system, which was referred to as Dārṣṭāntika or Sautrāntika. They can thus be regarded as Mahāyānists ‘doing Abhidharma’. Later, after the Mahāyāna had developed its own Abhidharma, the Sautrāntika system became redundant and the earlier situation was no longer understood. It thus would appear, on this account, that the Sautrāntikas were never a separate school and should not be counted among the Eighteen Schools of Early Buddhism. According to other authorities however, a cross-textual study of surviving Āgamas and Vinayas shows that the Sautrāntika, Mūla-Sarvāstivāda and Gandhāri Sarvāstivāda are identical, and the Dārṣṭāntika is an earlier alternative name.